NICOMACHEANETHICS(BOOKVI) 199
medicine, for example, is the science of matters pertaining to health, or geometry the sci-
ence which deals with magnitudes. For understanding is concerned neither with eternal and
unchangeable truth nor with anything and everything that comes into being [and passes
away again]. It deals with matters concerning which doubt and deliberation are possible.
Accordingly, though its sphere is the same as that of practical wisdom, understanding and
practical wisdom are not the same. Practical wisdom issues commands: its end is to tell
us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do. Understanding, on the other hand,
only passes judgment. [There is no difference between understanding and excellence in
understanding:] for excellence in understanding is the same as understanding, and men of
understanding are men of good understanding.
Thus understanding is neither possession nor acquisition of practical wisdom. Just
as learning is called “understanding” when a man makes use of his faculty of knowledge,
so [we speak of “understanding”] when it implies the use of one’s faculty of opinion in
judging statements made by another person about matters which belong to the realm of
practical wisdom—and in judging such statements rightly, for goodunderstanding means
that the judgment is right. It is from this act of learning or understanding [what someone
else says] that the term “understanding” as predicated of “men of good understanding” is
derived. For we frequently use the words “learning” and “understanding” synonymously.
- Practical Wisdom and Good Sense:As for what is called “good sense,” the qual-
ity which makes us say of a person that he has the sense to forgive others, [i.e., sympa-
thetic understanding], and that he has good sense, this is a correct judgment of what is fair
or equitable. This is indicated by the fact that we attribute to an equitable man especially
sympathetic understanding and that we say that it is fair, in certain cases, to have the sense
to forgive. Sympathetic understanding is a correct critical sense or judgment of what is
fair; and a correct judgment is a true one.
All these characteristics, as one would expect, tend toward the same goal. We
attribute good sense, understanding, practical wisdom, and intelligence to the same per-
sons, and in saying that they have good sense, we imply at the same time that they have
a mature intelligence and that they are men of practical wisdom and understanding. For
what these capacities [have in common is that they are] all concerned with ultimate par-
ticular facts. To say that a person has good judgment in matters of practical wisdom
implies that he is understanding and has good sense or that he has sympathetic under-
standing; for equitable acts are common to all good men in their relation with someone
else. Now, all matters of action are in the sphere of the particulars and ultimates. Not
only must a man of practical wisdom take cognizance of particulars, but understanding
and good sense, too, deal with matters of action, and matters of action are ultimates. As
for intelligence, it deals with ultimates at both ends of the scale. It is intelligence, not rea-
soning, that has as its objects primary terms and definitions as well as ultimate particu-
lars. Intelligence grasps, on the one hand, the unchangeable, primary terms and concepts
for demonstrations; on the other hand, in questions of action, it grasps the ultimate, con-
tingent fact and the minor premise. For it is particular facts that form the starting points
or principles for [our knowledge of] the goal of action: universals arise out of particulars.
Hence one must have perception of particular facts, and this perception is intelligence.*
Intelligence is, therefore, both starting point and end; for demonstrations start with ulti-
mate terms and have ultimate facts as their objects.
510152025301143 b5*I.e., we can attain the end—happiness—only by discovering the general rules of moral conduct, and
these, in turn, rest on the immediate apprehension by intelligence of particular moral facts.